Russia's UN representative Vasily Nebensya assures that
there will be no attack on Ukraine. However, according to the Russian embassy, the troops stationed near the border will not be withdrawn. It is the country's "sovereign right" to deploy forces on its own territory.
Russia says it will not "back down" in the Ukraine conflict despite the threat of sanctions by the US. "It is Washington, not Moscow, that is fuelling tensions," the Russian embassy in Washington said on Facebook on Tuesday. Russia would "not back down and stand at attention" while the US formulated its sanctions threats.
The embassy went on to say that the Russian troops currently massed on the Ukrainian border "threaten no one". It was Russia's "sovereign right" to deploy its forces on its territory. The embassy was responding to a statement by the US State Department on Twitter. In it, Washington accused Moscow of invading Ukraine in 2014 and annexing Crimea.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speak again about the conflict during a telephone conversation on Tuesday. Tensions between the two countries had recently escalated massively.
The USA and its allies accuse Russia of having massed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine. The West therefore fears a possible Russian invasion of the neighbouring country.
The Kremlin denies plans to attack, but at the same time claims that it feels threatened by Ukraine and NATO. President Vladimir Putin is therefore demanding written commitments from Nato, for example to refrain from further eastward expansion. The USA and its Western allies reject this.
Russia does not want to start a war
Even if the negotiations on security in Europe were to fail, there would be no invasion of Ukraine by Russia, he said. "I can rule that out," Russia's representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebensja, said in New York, according to the Interfax agency. Nebensja had accused the US at the UN meeting on Monday of trying to provoke a war in Europe.
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At the same time, the leadership in Moscow does not rule out intervention in the conflict over eastern Ukraine should Kiev attempt to take back the breakaway territories in the Donbass by force with a military operation.
Russia could invade there, invoking its military doctrine to protect its citizens. Moscow is demanding that Kiev abide by the Minsk peace plan to prevent a violent resolution of the conflict.
Russia's UN Ambassador Nebensja had called on the US in the UN meeting to also commit to the peace agreement and not to continue to "whip up hysteria" around a threat of war in Europe.
He accused the US of talking about a deployment of more than 100,000 Russian troops along Ukraine's border without presenting any evidence. It remains open how the USA arrived at this figure. Russia does not deny the troop deployment itself, but has never given figures.
Meanwhile, Russia continued its preparations for a manoeuvre in Belarus, according to the Defence Ministry in Moscow. For this purpose, a field camp was set up on a military training area in Brest on the border to Poland.
Russia and Belarus had stressed that the standard exercise from 10 to 20 February was not a threat to anyone. The USA, on the other hand, sees the danger of an attack on Ukraine from there as well - and withdrew diplomats from Belarus.
An exercise also began in Russia's far east in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk in the Pacific Ocean, according to a statement from the Defence Ministry in Moscow. About 20 warships of the Russian Pacific Fleet took part in the manoeuvre, according to the statement.
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https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article236612055/Russland-will-nicht-zurueckweichen-schliesst-Kriegsbeginn-aber-aus.html